CHAPTER X

CONCERNING A DAY OF HONEST WARFARE AND A SUNSET HARBINGER NOT
OF THE NIGHT BUT OF THE DAWN

THAT episode, upon the bridge spanning the Long Water, brought
Richard would‐be saint, Richard pilgrim along the great white road which
leads onward to Perfection, into lively collision with Richard the natural
man, not to mention Richard the “wild bull in a net.” These opposing forces
engaged battle, with the consequence that the carriage horses took the hill
at a rather breakneck pace. Not that Dickie touched them, but that, he being
vibrant, they felt his mood down the length of the reins and responded to
it.

“Ludovic need hardly have been in such a prodigious hurry,” he broke out. “He
might have allowed one a few days’ grace. It was a defect of taste to come
over immediately; but then all that family’s taste is liable to lapses.”

Promptly he repented, ashamed both of his anger and such self‐revealing
expression of it.

“I daresay it’s all for the best though. Better a thing should be nipped in
the bud than in the blossom. And this puts it all on a right footing. One
might easily drift into depending too much upon Honoria. I own I was
dangerously near doing that this spring. I don’t mind telling you so now,
mother, because this, you see, disposes finally of the matter.”

His voice contended oddly with the noise of the wheels, rattle of the
pole‐chains, pounding of the hoofs of the pulling horses. The sentences came
to Lady Calmady’s ears disjointed, difficult to follow and interpret.
Therefore she answered slightly at random.

“My dearest, I could have kept, her longer in the spring if I had only
known,” she said, a disquieting suspicion of lost opportunity assailing her.
“But, from certain things which you said, I thought you preferred our being
alone.”

“So I did. I wanted her to go because I wanted her to stay. Do you see?”

“Ah, yes! I see,” Katherine replied. And at that moment,
page: 590 it must be conceded, her sentiments were not
conspicuously pacific towards her devoted adherent, Mr. Quayle.

“We’ve a good many interests in common,” Dickie went on, “and there seemed a
chance of one’s settling down into a rather charming friendship with her. It
was a beguiling prospect. And, for that very reason, it was best she should
depart. The prospect, in all its beguilingness, renewed itself to‐day after
luncheon.”‐He paused, handling the plunging horses.—“And so, after all,
Ludovic shall be reckoned welcome; for, as I say, I might have come to
depend on her. And one’s a fool—I ought to have learnt that salutary lesson
by this time—a rank fool, to depend on anybody or anything, save oneself,
simply and solely oneself”—his tone softened—“and upon you, most dear and
long‐suffering mother.—Therefore the dream of friendship goes overboard
along with all the rest of one’s little illusions. And every illusion one
rids oneself of is so much to the good. It lightens the ship. It lessens the
chances of foundering. Clearly it is so much pure gain.”

That evening, pleading—unexampled occurrence in her case—a headache as
excuse, Miss St. Quentin did not put in an appearance at dinner. Nor did
Richard put in an appearance at breakfast next morning. At an early hour he
had received a communication earnestly requesting his presence at the
Westchurch Infirmary. His mission promised to be a melancholy one, yet he
was not sorry for the demand made by it upon his time and thought. For,
notwithstanding the philosophic tone he had adopted with Lady Calmady in
speaking of that friendship which, if not nipped in the bud, might have
reached perils of too luxuriant blossoming, the would‐be saint and the
natural man, the pilgrim on the highroad to Perfection and that very
inconvenient animal “the wild bull in a net,” kept up warfare within Richard
Calmady. They were hard at it even yet, when, in the fair freshness of the
September morning—the grasses and hedge‐fruit, the wild flowers, and
low‐growing, tangled coppices by the roadside, still heavy with dew—he drove
over to Westchurch. The day was bright, with flying cloud and a westerly
breeze. The dust was laid, and the atmosphere, cleared by the storm of the
preceding afternoon, had a smack of autumn in it. It was one of those
delicious, yet distracting, days when the sea calls, and when whosoever
loves sea‐faring grows restless, must seek movement, seek the open, strain
his eyes towards the margin of the land—be the coast‐line never so far
distant—tormented by desire for sight of the blue water, and the strong and
naked joys of the mighty ridge and furrow where go the gallant ships.

page: 591

With the upspringing of the wind at dawn, that calling of the sea had made
itself heard to Richard. At first it suggested only the practical temptation
of putting the Reprieve into commission, and engaging Lady
Calmady to go forth with him on a three or four months’ cruise. But that, as
he speedily convinced himself, was but a pitifully cheap expedient, a
shirking of voluntarily assumed responsibility, a childish cheating of
discontent, rather than an honestly attempted cure of it. If cure was to be
achieved, the canker must be excised, boldly cut out, not overlaid merely by
some trifle of partially concealing plaster. For he knew well enough, as all
sea‐lovers know—and, as he drove through the dappled sunlight and shadow,
frankly admitted—that though the sea itself very actually and really called,
yet its calling was the voice and symbol of much over and above itself. For
in it speaks the eternal necessity of going forward, that hunger and thirst
for the absolute and ultimate which drives every human creature whose heart
and soul and intellect are truly animate. And to him, just now, it spoke
more particularly of the natural instincts of his manhood—of ambition, of
passion, of headlong desire of sensation, excitement, adventure, of just all
that, in fact, which he had forsworn, had agreed with himself to cast aside
and forget. And, thinking of this, suspicion assailed him that forswearing
had been slightly insincere and perfunctory. He accused himself of
nourishing the belief that giving he would also receive,—and that in
kind,—while that any sacrifice which he offered would be returned to him
doubled in value. Casting his bread upon the waters, he accused himself of
having expected to find it, not “after many days,” but immediately—a full
baker’s dozen ready to hand in his pocket. His motives had not been wholly
pure. Actually, though not at the time consciously, he had essayed to strike
a bargain with the Almighty.

Just as he reached the top of the long, straight hill leading down into
Westchurch, Richard arrived at these unflattering conclusions. On either
side the road, upon the yellow surface of which the sunlight played through
the tossing leaves of the plane trees, were villas of very varied and hybrid
styles of architecture. They were, for the most part, smothered in creepers,
and set in gardens gay with blossom. Below lay the sprawling, red‐brick
town, blotted with purple shadow. A black canal meandered through the heart
of it, crossed by mean, humpbacked bridges. The huge, amorphous buildings of
its railway station—engine sheds, goods warehouses, trailing of swiftly
dispersed white smoke—the grime and clamour of all that, its factory
buildings and tall chimneys, were very evident, as were the pale towers
of
page: 592 its churches. And beyond the ugly,
pushing, industrial commonplace of it, striking a very different note, the
blue ribbon of the still youthful Thames, backed by high‐lying chalk‐lands
fringed with hanging woods, traversed a stretch of flat, green meadows.
Richard’s eyes rested upon the scene absently, since thought just now had
more empire over him than any outward seeing. For he perceived that he must
cleanse himself yet further of self‐seeking. Those words, “if thou wilt be
perfect sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and follow thou me,” have
not a material and objective significance merely. They deal with each
personal desire, even the apparently most legitimate; with each indulgence
of personal feeling, even the apparently most innocent; with the inward
attitude and the atmosphere of the mind even more closely than with outward
action and conduct. And so Richard reached the conclusion that he must strip
himself yet nearer to the bone. He must digest the harsh truth that virtue
is its own reward in the sense that it is its only reward, and must look for
nothing beyond that. He had grown slack of late, seduced by visions of
pleasant things permitted most men but to him forbidden; and wearied, too,
by the length of the way and inevitable monotony of it now first heat of
enthusiasm had evaporated. Well—it was all very simple. He must just
re‐dedicate himself. And in this stern and chastened frame of mind he drove
through the bustle of the country town—Saturday, market day, its streets
unusually alive—nodding to an acquaintance here and there in passing, two or
three of his tenant farmers, Mr. Cathcart of Newlands in on county business,
Goodall the octogenarian miller from Parson’s Holt, and Lemuel Image the
brewer, bursting out of an obviously new suit of very showy tweeds. Then, at
the main door of the Infirmary, helped by the stalwart, hospital porter, he
got down from the dog‐cart; and subsequently—raked by curious eyes, saluted
by hardly repressed tittering from the out‐patients waiting en queue for admission to the dispensary—he
made his slow way along the bare, vaultlike, stone passage to the accident
ward, in the far corner of which a bed was shut off from the rest by an
arrangement of screens and of curtains.

And it was in the same chastened frame of mind that, some four or five hours
later, Richard entered the dining‐room at Brockhurst. The two ladies had
nearly finished luncheon and were about to rise from the table. Lady Calmady
greeted him very gladly; but abstained from inquiry as to his doings or from
comment on the lateness of the hour, since experience had long ago taught
her that of all known animals man is the one of whom
page: 593 it is least profitable for woman to ask
questions. Dickie was here at home, alive, intact, her eyes were rejoiced by
the sight of him, that was sufficient. If he had anything to tell her, no
doubt he would tell it later. For the rest, she had something to tell him;
but that too must wait until time and circumstance were propitious, since
the conveying of it involved delicate diplomacies. It must be handled
lightly. For the life of her she must avoid all appearance of eagerness, all
appearance of attaching serious importance to the communication. Lady
Calmady had learned, this morning, that Honoria St. Quentin did not propose
to marry Ludovic Quayle. The young lady, whose charming nonchalance was
curiously in eclipse to‐day, had given her to understand so much; but very
briefly, the subject evidently being rather painful to her. She was silent
and a little distrait; but she was also very gentle, displaying a
disposition to follow Katherine about wherever she went, and a pretty zeal
in doing small odd jobs for her. Katherine was touched and tenderly amused
by her manner, which was as that of a charming child coveting assurance that
it need not be ashamed of itself, and that it has not really done anything
naughty! But Katherine sighed too, watching this strong, graceful, capable
creature; for, if things had been otherwise with Dickie, how thankfully she
would have given the keeping of his future into this woman’s hands. She had
ceased to be jealous even of her son’s love. Gladly, gratefully, would she
have shared that love, accepting the second place, if only—but all that was
beyond possibility of hope. Still the friendship of which he had spoken
somewhat bitterly yesterday—poor darling—remained. Ludovic Quayle’s
pretensions—she felt very pitifully towards that accomplished gentleman, all
his good qualities had started into high relief—but, his pretensions no
longer barring the way to that friendship, she pledged herself to work for
the promotion of it. Dickie was too severe in self‐repression, was
over‐strained in stoicism; and, ignoring the fact that in his fixity of
purpose, his exaggerations of self‐abnegation, he proved himself very much
her own son, she determined secretly, cautiously, lovingly, to combat all
that.

It was, therefore, with warm satisfaction that, as Honoria was about to rise
from the table, she observed Richard emerge, in a degree, from his
abstraction, and heard him say:—

“You told me you’d like to ride over to Farley this afternoon and see the
home for my crippled people. Are you too tired after your headache, or do
you still care to go?”

“Oh! I’m not tired, thanks,” Honoria answered. Then she hesitated; and
Richard, looking at her, was aware, as on the
page: 594 bridge yesterday, of a sudden and singular
thickening of her features, which, while marring her beauty, rendered her
aspect strangely pathetic, as of one who sustains some mysterious hurt. And
to him it seemed, for the moment, as though both that hurt and the
infliction of it bore subtle relation to himself. Common sense discredited
the notion as unpermissibly fantastic, still it influenced and softened his
manner.

“But you know you are looking frightfully done up yourself, Richard,” she
went on, with a charming air of half‐reluctant protest. “Isn’t he, Cousin
Katherine? Are you sure you want to ride this afternoon? Please don’t go out
just on my account.”

“Oh! I’m right enough,” he answered. “I’d infinitely rather go out.”

He pushed back his chair and reached down for his crutches. Still the
fantastic notion that, all unwittingly, he had been guilty of doing Honoria
some strange injury, clung to him. He was sensible of the desire to offer
reparation. This made him more communicative than he would otherwise have
been.

“I saw a man die this morning—that’s all,” he said. “I know it’s stupid; but
one can’t help it, it knocks one about a bit. You see he didn’t want to die,
poor fellow, though, God knows, he’d little enough to live for—or to live
with, for that matter.”

“Your factory hand?” Honoria asked.

Richard slipped out of his chair and stood upright.

“Yes, my factory hand,” he answered. “Dear, old Knott was fearfully savage
about it. He was so tremendously keen on the case, and made sure of pulling
him through. But the poor boy had been sliced up a little too
thoroughly.”—Richard paused, smiling at Honoria. “So all one could do was to
go with him just as far as is permitted out into the great silence, and
then—then come home to luncheon. The home at Farley loses its point, rather,
now he is dead. Still there are others, plenty of others, enough to satisfy
even Knott’s greed of riveting broken human crockery.—Oh yes! I shall enjoy
riding over, if you are still good to come. Four o’clock—that’ll suit you?
I’ll order the horses.”

And so, in due course, the two rode forth together into the brightness of the
September afternoon. The sea still called; but Dickie’s ears were deaf to
all dangerous allurements and excitations resident in that calling. It had
to him, just now, only the pensive charm of a far‐away melody, which, though
no doubt of great and immediate import to others, had ceased to be any
concern of his. Beside the deathbed in the hospital
page: 595 ward he had renewed his vows, and the efficacy of
that renewal was very present with him. It made for repose. It laid the evil
spirit of defiance, of self‐consciousness, of humiliation, so often
obtaining in his intercourse with women—a spirit begotten by the perpetual
prick of his deformity, and in part, too, by his determined adoption of the
ascetic attitude in regard to the affections. He was spent by the emotions
of the morning, but that also made for repose. For the time being devils
were cast out. He was tranquil, yet exalted. His eyes had a smile in them,
as though they looked beyond the limit of things transitory and material
into the regions of the Pure Idea, where the eternal values are disclosed
and Peace has her dwelling. And, precisely because of all this, he could
take Honoria’s presence lightly, be chivalrously solicitous of her
entertainment and well‐being, and talk to her with greater freedom than ever
heretofore. He ceased to be on his guard with her because, in good truth, it
seemed to him there ceased to be anything to guard against. For the time
being, at all events, he had got to the other side of all that; and so she
and his relation to her, had become part of that charming but far‐away
melody which was no concern of his—though mighty great and altogether worthy
concern of others, of Ludovic Quayle, for example.—And in his present
tranquil humour he could listen to the sweetness of that melody
ungrudgingly. It was pleasant. He could enjoy it without envy, though it was
none of his.

But to Honoria’s seeing it must be owned, matters shaped themselves very
differently. For the usually unperturbed, the chaste and fearless soul of
her endured violent assaults, violent commotions, the origin of which she
but partially understood. And these Richard’s frankness, his courteous, in
some sort brotherly, good‐fellowship, served to intensify rather than allay.
The feeling of the noble horse under her, the cool, westerly wind in her
face, went to brace her nerves, and restore the self‐possession, courage of
judgment, and clearness of thought, which had been lacking to her during the
past twenty‐four hours. Nevertheless she rode as through a
but‐newly‐discovered country, familiar objects displaying alien aspects,
familiar phases assuming unlooked‐for significance, a something challenging
and fateful meeting her everywhere. The whole future seemed to hang in the
balance: and she waited, dreading yet longing, to see the scale turn.

This afternoon the harvesters were carrying the corn. Red‐painted waggons,
drawn by sleek, heavy‐made, cart‐horses, crawled slowly across the blond
stubble. It was pretty to see the rusty‐
page: 596
gold sheaves tossed up from the shining prongs of the pitchforks on to the
mountainous load. Honoria and Richard watched this, a little minute, from
the grass‐ride bordering the roadway beneath the elms. Next came the
high‐lying moorland, beyond the lodges. The fine‐leaved heath was thick with
red‐purple blossom. Patches of dusky heather were frosted with dainty pink.
Spikes of genista and beds of needle‐furze showed sharply yellow, vividly
green, and a fringe of blue campanula, with frail, quivering bells, outlined
all open spaces. The face of the land had been washed by the rain. It shone
with an inimitable cleanliness, as though consciously happy in relief from
all soil of dust. And it was here, the open country stretching afar on all
sides, that Dickie began talking, not, as at first, in desultory fashion,
but of matters nearly pertaining and closely interesting to himself.

“You know,” he said, as they walked the horses quietly, neck to neck, along
the moorland road, “I don’t go in for system‐making or for reforms on any
big scale. That doesn’t come within my province. I must leave that to
politicians and to men who are in the push of the world. I admire it. I
rejoice in the hot‐headed, narrow‐brained, whole‐hearted agitator, who
believes that his system adopted, his reform carried through, the whole show
will instantly be put straight. Such faith is very touching.”

“And the reformer has sometimes done some little good after all,” Honoria
commented.

“Of course he has,” Dickie agreed. “Only as a rule, poor dear, he can’t be
contented but that his special reform should be the final one, that his
system should be the universal panacea. And in point of fact no reform is
final this side of death, and no panacea is universal, save that which the
Maker of the Universe chooses to work out—is working out now, if we could
any way grasp it—through the slow course of unnumbered ages. Let the
reformer do all he can, but don’t let him turn sour because his pet reform,
his pet system, sinks away and is swallowed up in the great sea of
things—sea of human progress, if you like. Every system is bound to prove
too small, every reform ludicrously inadequate—be it never so
radical—because material conditions are perpetually changing, while man in
his mental, emotional and physical aspects remains always precisely the
same.”

They passed from the breezy upland into the high‐banked lane which, leading
downwards, joins the great London and Portsmouth Road just beyond Farley
Row.

page: 597

“And—and that is where I come in!” Richard said, turning a little in the
saddle and smiling sweet‐temperedly, yet with a suggestion of self‐mockery,
upon his companion. “Just because, in essential respects, mankind
remains—notwithstanding modifications of his environment—substantially the
same, from the era of the Pentateuch to the era of the Rougon‐Macquarts,
there must always be a lot of wreckage, of waste, and refuse humanity. The
inauguration of each new system, each new reform—religious, political,
educational, economic—practically they’re all in the same boat—let alone the
inevitable breakdown or petering out of each, necessarily produces a fresh
crop of such waste and refuse material. And in that a man like myself, who
does not aspire to cure or to construct, but merely to alleviate and to pick
up the pieces, finds his chance.”

And Honoria listened, musing—approved, enthusiasm gaining her; yet protested,
since, even while she admired, she rebelled a little on his account, and for
his sake.

“But it is rather a hard life, surely, Richard,” she said, “which you propose
to yourself? Always the pieces, the thing broken and spoiled, never the
thing in its beauty, full of promise, and whole!”

“It is less hard for me than for most,” he answered, “or should be so. After
all, I am to the manner born—a bit of human wreckage myself, with which, but
for the accident of wealth, things would have gone pretty badly. I used to
be horribly scared sometimes, as a small boy, thinking to what uses I might
be put if the kindly, golden rampart ever gave.”

He became silent. As for Honoria, she had neither courage. to look at or to
answer him just then.

“And you see, I’m absolutely free,” he added presently.—“ I am alone, always
shall be so. If the life is hard, I ask no one to share it, so I may make it
what I like.”

Thereupon regret, almost intolerable in its poignancy, invaded Miss St.
Quentin that she would have to go away, to go back to the world and all the
foolish obtaining fashions of it; that she should have to take that
pre‐eminently well‐cushioned and luxurious winter’s journey to Cairo. She
longed inexpressibly to remain here, to assist in these experiments made in
the name of Holy Charity. She longed inexpressibly to— And there Honoria
paused, even in thought. Yet she glanced at the
page: 598 young man riding beside her—at the handsome
profile, still and set in outline, the suggestion, it was no more, of a scar
running downward across the left cheek; at the well‐made, upright,
broad‐shouldered figure, and then at the saddle, peaked, back and front,
with oddly‐shaped appendages to it resembling old‐fashioned holsters.—And,
as yesterday upon the bridge, the ache of a pain at once sweet and terrible
laid hold of her, making her queerly hint. The single street, sun‐covered,
sleepy, empty save for a brewer’s dray and tax‐cart or two standing before
the solid Georgian portals of the White Lion Inn, for a straggling tail of
children bearing home small shoppings and jugs of supper beer, for a flock
of grey geese proceeding with aggressively self‐righteous demeanour along
the very middle of the roadway and lowering long necks to hiss defiance at
the passer‐by, and for an old black retriever dozing peacefully beneath one
of the rustling sycamores in front of Josiah Appleyard, the saddler’s
shop—all these, as she looked at them, became uncertain in outline, and
reeled before Honoria’s eyes. For the moment she experienced a difficulty in
keeping steady in the saddle. But the horses still walked quietly, neck to
neck, their shadows, and those of their riders growing longer, narrower,
outstretched before them as the sun declined in the west. All the future
hung in the balance; but the scale had not turned as yet.

Then Richard’s voice took up its parable again.

“Perhaps it’s a rather fraudulently comfortable doctrine, yet it does strike
one that the justification of disaster, in all its many forms, is the
opportunity it affords the individualist. He may use it for
self‐aggrandisement, or for self‐devotion—though I rather shy at so showy a
word as that last. However, the use he makes of it isn’t the point. What is
the point, to my mind at least is this—though it doesn’t sound magnificent,
it hardly indeed sounds cleanly—that whatever trade fails, whatever
profession, thanks to the advance of civilisation, becomes obsolete, that of
the man with the dust‐cart, of the scavenger, of the sweeper, won’t.”

Once more Richard smiled upon his companion charmingly, yet with something of
self‐mockery.

“And so, you see, having knocked about enough to grow careless of niceties of
prejudice, and to acquire an immense admiration for any vocation which
promises permanence, I join hands with the dustman. In the light of science,
and in that of religion alike, nothing really is common or unclean. And
then—then, if you are beyond the pale in any case, as some of us are, it’s a
little too transparently cheap to be afraid of soiling”—He broke off.—
page: 599 “Away there to the left, Honoria,” he
said. “You see the house? The yellow‐washed one, with the gables and tiled
roofs—there, back on the slope.—Bagshaw, the Bond Street poulterer, had it
for years. His lease ran out in the spring, and happily he didn’t care to
renew. Had bought himself an up‐to‐date, villa residence somewhere in the
suburbs—Chislehurst, I believe. So I took the place over. It will do for a
beginning—the small end of the wedge of my scavenger’s business. There are
over five acres of garden and orchard, and plenty of rooms on each floor,
which gives good range for the disabled to move about in—and the stairs,
only one flight, are easy. One has to think of these details. And—well, the
house commands a magnificent view of Clerke’s Green, and the geese on it,
than which nothing clearly can be more exciting!”

The groom rode forward and opened the gate. Before the square, outstanding
porch Richard drew up.

“I should like to come in with you,” he said. “But you see it’s rather a
business getting off one’s horse, and I can’t very well manage the stairs.
So I’ll wait about till you are ready. Don’t hurry. I want you to see all
the arrangements, if it doesn’t bore you, and make suggestions. The
carpenters are there, doing overtime. They’ll let you through if the
caretaker’s out.”

Thus admonished, Miss St. Quentin dismounted and made her way into the house.
A broad passage led straight through it. The open door at the farther end
disclosed a vista of box‐edged path and flower‐borders where, in gay ranks,
stood tall sunflowers, holly‐hocks, Michaelmas‐daisies, and such like.
Beyond was orchard, the round‐headed apple‐trees, bright with polished
fruit, rising from a carpet of grass. The rooms, to left and right of the
passage, were pleasantly sun‐warmed and mellow of aspect, the ceilings of
them crossed by massive beams. Honoria visited them, dutifully observant.
She encountered the head carpenter, an acquaintance and ally during those
four years so great part of which she had spent at Brockhurst. She talked
with him, making inquiries concerning wife, children, and trade, incident to
such a meeting, her face very serious all the while, the skirt of her habit
gathered up in one hand, her gait a trifle stiff and measured owing to her
high riding‐boots. But, though she acquitted herself in all kindliness of
conversation, though she conscientiously inspected each separate apartment,
and noted the cheerful comeliness of orchard and garden, it must be owned
all these remained singularly distant from her actual emotion and thought.
She was glad to be alone. She was glad to be away from Richard Calmady,
though zealously obedient to his
page: 600 wishes in
respect of this inspection. For his presence became increasingly oppressive
from the intensity of feeling it produced in her, and which she was, at
present, powerless to direct toward any reasonable and definite end. This
rendered her tongue‐tied, and, as she fancied, stupid. Her unreadiness
mortified her. She, usually indifferent enough to the impression she
produced on others, was sensible of a keen desire to appear at her best. She
did in fact, so she believed, appear at her worst, slow of understanding and
of sympathy.—But then all the future hung in the balance. The scale delayed
to turn. And the strain of waiting became agitating to the point of
distress.

At last the course of her so‐dutiful survey brought her to a quaint, little
chamber, situated immediately over the square, outstanding porch. It was
lighted by a single, hooded window placed in the centre of the front wall.
It was evidently designed for a linen room, and was in process of being
fitted with shelves and cupboards of white pine. The floor was deep in
shavings, long, curly, wafer‐coloured, semi‐transparent. They rustled like
fallen leaves when Honoria stepped among them. The air was filled with the
odour of them, dry and resinous as that of the fir forest. Ever after that
odour affected Honoria with a sense of half‐fearful joy and of impending
fate. She stood in the middle of the quaint, little chamber. The ceiling was
low. She had to bend her head to avoid violent contact between the central
beam of it and the crown of her felt hat. But circumscribed though the
space, and uncomfortable though her posture, she had an absurd longing to
lock the door of the little room, never to come out, to stay here forever!
Here she was safe. But outside, on the threshold, stood something she dared
not name. It drew her with a pain at once terrible and lovely. She dreaded
it. Yet once close to it, once face to face with it, she knew it would have
her; that it would not take no for an answer. Her pride, her chastity, was
in arms. Was this, she wondered, what men and women speak of so lightly,
laugh and joke about? Was this love?—To her it seemed wholly awe‐inspiring.
And so she clung strangely to the shelter of the quaint, little room with
its sea of rustling, resinous shavings. On the other side the door of it
waited that momentous decision which would cause the scale to turn. Yet the
minutes passed. To prolong her absence became impossible.

Just then there was a movement below, a crunching of the gravel, as though of
a horse growing restless, impatient of standing. Honoria moved forward,
opened the window, pushing back the casement against a cluster of
late‐blossoming, red roses,
page: 601 the petals of
which floated slowly downward describing fluttering circles. Richard Calmady
was just below. Honoria called to him.

“I am coming, Richard, I am coming!” she said.

He turned in the saddle and looked up at her smiling—a smile at once
courageous and resigned. Yet, notwithstanding that smile, Honoria once again
discovered in his eyes the chill desolation and homelessness of the sky of
the winter night. Then the scale turned, turned at last; for that same
lovely pain grew lovelier, more desirable than any possibility of ease,
until such time as that desolation should pass, that homelessness be cradled
to content in some sure harbourage.—Here was the thing given her to do, and
she must do it! She would risk all to win all. And, with that decision, her
serenity and freedom of soul returned. The white light of a noble
self‐devotion, reckless of self‐spending, reckless of consequence, the joy
of a great giving, illuminated her face.

As to Richard, he, looking up at her, though ignorant of her purpose,
misreading the cause of that inspired aspect, still thought he had never
witnessed so graciously gallant a sight. The nymph whom he had first known,
who had baffled and crossed him, was here still, strong, untamed, elusive,
remote. But a woman was here too, of finest fibre, faithful and loyal,
capable of undying tenderness, of an all‐encircling and heroic love. Then
the desires of the natural man stirred somewhat in Richard, just
because—paradox though it undoubtedly was—she provoked less the carnal,
perishing passion of the flesh, than the pure and imperishable passion of
the spirit. Irrepressible envy of Ludovic Quayle, her lover, seized him,
irrepressible demand for just all those things which that other Richard, the
would‐be saint, had so sternly condemned himself to repudiate, to cast aside
and forget. And the would‐be saint triumphed—beating down thought of all
that, trampling it under foot—so that after briefest interval he called up
to her cheerily enough.

“Well, what do you make of the dust‐cart? Rather fascinating, isn’t it?
Notwithstanding its uncleanly name, it’s really rather sweet.”

To which she answered, speaking from out the wide background of her own
emotion and purpose:—

“Yes, yes—it’s sad in a way, Richard, penetratingly, splendidly sad. But one
wouldn’t have it otherwise; for it is splendid, and it is sweet, abundantly
sweet.”—Then her tone changed.—“I won’t keep you waiting any longer, I’m
coming,” she said.

page: 602

Honoria looked round the quaint, little room, with its half‐adjusted shelves
and cupboards, the floor of it deep in resinous, semi‐transparent,
wafer‐coloured shavings, bidding it adieu. For good or evil, happiness or
sorrow, she was sensible it told for much in her life’s experience. Then,
something delicately militant in her carriage, she swung away downstairs and
out of the house. She was going forth to war indeed, to a war which in no
shape or form had she ever waged as yet. Many men had wooed her, and their
wooing had left her cold. She had never wooed any man. Why should she? To
her no man had ever mattered one little bit.

So she mounted, and they rode away.—A spin across the level turf to hearten
her up, satisfy the fulness of sensation which held her, and shake her
nerves into place. It was exhilarating. She grew keen and tense, her whole
economy becoming reliable and well‐knit by the strong exercise and sense of
the superbly healthy and unperplexed vitality of the horse under her.
Honoria could have fought with dragons just then, had such been there to
fight with! But, in point of fact, nothing more aggressively dangerous
presented itself for encounter than the shallow ford which divides the
parish of Farley from that of Sandyfield and the tithing of Brockhurst.
Snorting a little, the horses splashed through the clear, brown water and
entered upon the rough, rutted road, grass‐grown in places, which, ending
beneath a broken avenue of ancient, stag‐headed oaks, leads to the entrance
of the Brockhurst woods. These, crowned by the dark, ragged line of the fir
forest, rose in a soft, dense mass against the western sky, in which showed
promise of a fair pageant of sunset. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy
ruts before the horses, and, rising at last with a long‐drawn whir of wings,
skimmed the top of the crumbling bank and dropped in the stubble‐field on
the right. A pause, while the keeper’s wife ran out to open the white
gate,—the dogs meanwhile, from their wooden kennels under the Spanish
chestnuts upon the hillock behind the lodge, pulling at their chains and
keeping up a vociferous chorus. Thus heralded, the riders passed into the
mysteriously whispering quiet of the great woods.

The heavy, summer foliage remained as yet untouched by the hectic of autumn.
Diversity was observable in form rather than in tint, and from this resulted
a remarkable effect of unity, a singleness of intention, and of far‐reaching
secrecy. The multitudinous leaves and the all‐pervading green gloom of them
around, above, seemed to engulf horses and riders. It was as though they
rode across the floor of ocean, the green tides
page: 603 sweeping overhead. Yet the trees of the wood
asserted their intelligent presence now and again. Audibly they talked
together, bent themselves a little to listen and to look, as though curious
of the aspect and purposes of these wandering mortals. And all this, the
unity and secrecy of the place, affected both Richard and Honoria strangely,
circling them about with something of earth‐magic, removing them far from
ordinary conditions of social intercourse, and thus rendering it possible,
inevitable even, that they should think such thoughts and say such words as
part company with subterfuge and concealment, go naked, and speak uttermost
truth. For, with only the trees of the wood to listen, with that sibilant
whisper of the green tide overhead, with strong emotion compelling them—in
the one case towards death of self, in the other towards giving of self—in
the one towards austere passivity, in the other towards activity taxing all
capital of pride, of delicacy, and of tact—developments became imminent, and
those of the most vital sort.

The conversation had been broken, desultory; but now, by tacit consent, the
pace became quiet again, the horses were permitted to walk. To have gone
other than softly through the living heart of the greenwood must have
savoured of desecration. Yet Richard was not insensible to a certain danger.
He tried, rousing himself to conversation, to rouse himself also to the
practical and commonplace.

“I am glad you liked my house,” he said. “But I hear the aristocracy of the
Row laments. It shies at the idea of being invaded by more or less frightful
creatures. But I remain deaf. I really can’t bother about that. It is so
immeasurably more unpleasant to be frightful than to see that which is so,
that I’m afraid my sympathies remain rather pig‐headedly one‐sided. I
propose to educate the Row in the grace of pity. It may lay up merit by due
exercise of that.”

Richard took off his hat and rode bare‐headed, looking away into the
delicious, green gloom. Here, where the wood was thickest, oak and beech
shutting out the sky, clasping hands overhead, the ground beneath them deep
in moss and fern, that gloom was exactly like the colour of Honoria’s eyes.
He wished it wasn’t so. He tried to forget it. But the resemblance haunted
him. Look where he might, still he seemed to look into those singular and
charming eyes. He talked on determinedly, putting a force upon himself, too
often saying that which, no sooner was it out of his mouth, than he wished
unsaid.

“I don’t want to be too hard on the Row, though. It has a
page: 604 right, after all, to its little prejudices. Only
you see for those who, poor souls, are different to other people it becomes
of such supreme importance to keep in touch with the average. I have found
that out in practice. And so I refuse to shut my waste humanity away. They
must neither hide themselves nor be hidden, be spared seeing how much other
people enjoy from which they are debarred, nor grow over‐conscious of their
own ungainliness. That is why I’ve planted them and their gardens, and their
pigs and their poultry—we’ll have a lot of live stock, a second generation,
even of chickens, offers remarkable consolations—on the highroad, at the
entrance of the little town, where, on a small scale at all events, they’ll
see the world that’s straight‐backed and has its proper complement of limbs
and senses, go by. Envy, hatred, and malice, and the seven devils of
morbidity are forever lying in wait for them—well—for us—for me and those
like me, I mean. In proportion as one’s brought up tenderly—as I was—one
doesn’t realise the deprivation and disgust of one’s condition at the start.
But once realised, one’s inclination is to kill. At least a man’s is. A
woman may accept it more quietly, I suppose.”

“Thirty years’ experience—no, I don’t exaggerate! Each time one makes a fresh
acquaintance, each time a pretty woman is just that bit kinder to one than
she would dare be to any man who was not out of it, each time people are
manifestly interested—politely, of course—and form a circle, make room for
one as they did at that particularly disagreeable Grimshott garden‐party
yesterday, each time—I don’t want to drivel, but so it is—one sees a pair of
lovers—oh! well, it’s not easy to retain one’s philosophy, not to obey the
primitive instincts of any animal when it’s ill‐used and hurt, and to
revenge oneself—to want to kill, in short.”

“You—you don’t hate women, then?” Honoria said, still slowly.

Richard stared at her for a moment. “Hate them?” he said. “I only wish to
goodness I did.”

“But in that case,” she began bravely, “why”—

“This is why,” he broke in.—“You may remember my engagement to Lady Constance
Quayle, and the part you, very properly, took in the cancelling of it? You
know better than I do—though my imagination is pretty fertile in dealing
with the
page: 605 situation—what instincts and
feelings prompted you to take that part.”

The young lady turned to him, her arms outstretched, notwithstanding
bridle‐reins and whip, her face, and those strange eyes which seemed so
integral a part of the fair greenwood, full of sorrowful entreaty and
distress.

“Richard, Richard,” she cried, “will you never forgive me that? She didn’t
love you. It was horrible, yet in doing that which I did, I believed—I
believe so still—I did what was right by you both.”

“Undoubtedly you did right, and that justifies my contention. In doing that
which you did you gave voice to the opinion of all wholesome‐minded people.
That’s exactly where it is. You felt the whole business to be outrageous. So
it was. I heartily agree.”—He paused, and the trees talked softly together,
bending down a little to listen and to look.—“As you say, she wasn’t in
love. Poor child, how could she be? No woman ever will be—at least not in
love of the nobler sort, of the sort which if one cannot have it, one had a
vast deal better have no love at all.”

“But I am not so sure of that,” Honoria said stoutly. “You rush to
conclusions. Isn’t it rather a reflection on all the rest of us to take
little Lady Constance as the measure of the insight and sensibility of the
whole sex? And then she had already lost all her innocent, little heart to
Captain Decies. Indeed you’re not fair to us.—Wait”—

“Like Ludovic Quayle?”

Miss St. Quentin straightened herself in the saddle.

“Oh! dear no, not the least like Ludovic Quayle!” she said. Which enigmatic
reply produced silence for a while on Dickie’s part. For there were various
ways in which it might be interpreted, some flattering, some eminently
unflattering, to himself. And from every point of view it was wisest to
accept that last form of interpretation. The whole conversation had been
perilous in character. It had been too intimate, had touched him too nearly,
taking place here in the clear glooms of the greenwood moreover which bore
such haunting kinship to those singularly sincere, and yet mysterious, eyes.
It is dangerous to ride across the floor of ocean with the whispering tides
sweeping overhead, and in such gallant company, besides, that to ride thus
forever could hardly come amiss!—Richard, in his turn, straightened himself
up in the saddle, opened his chest, taking a long breath, carried his head
high, said a stern “get thee behind me, Satan,” to encroaching sentiment and
emotion, and to those fair visions which his companion’s presence and
page: 606 her somewhat daring talk had conjured up.
He defied the earth‐magic, defied those sylvan deities who, as he divined,
sought to enthral him. For the moment he confounded Honoria’s influence with
theirs. It was something of a battle, and not the first one he had fought
to‐day. For the great, white road which leads onward to Perfection looked
dusty and arid enough—no reposeful shadow, no mystery, no beguiling green
glooms over it. Stark, straight, hard, it stretched on endlessly, as it
seemed, ahead. To travel it was slow and tedious work, in any case; and to
travel it on crutches!—But it was worse than useless to play with such
thoughts as these. He would put a stop to this disintegrating talk. He
turned to Honoria and spoke lightly, with a return of self‐mockery.

“Oh! your first instinct was the true one, depend upon it,” he said. “Though
I don’t deny it contributed, indirectly, to giving me a pretty rough
time.”

“Oh! dear me!” Honoria cried, almost piteously. Then she added:—“ But I don’t
see, why was that?”

“Because, I suppose, I had a sort of unwilling belief in you,” he said,
smiling.—Oh! this accursed conversation, why would it insistently drift back
into intimacy thus!

“Have I justified that belief?” she asked, with a certain pride yet a certain
eagerness.

“More than justified it,” Dickie answered. “My mother, who has a touchstone
for all that is of high worth, knew you from the first. Like the devils, I—I
believed and trembled—at least that is how I see it all now. So your action
came as a rather searching revelation and condemnation. When I perceived all
that it involved—oh, well! first I went to the dogs, and then”—

The horses walked side by side. Honoria stretched out her hand impulsively,
laid it on his arm.

“Richard, Richard, for pity’s sake don’t! You hurt me too much. It’s terrible
to have been the cause of such suffering.”

“You weren’t the cause,” he said. “Lies were the cause, behind which, like a
fool, I’d tried to shelter myself. You’ve been right, Honoria, from first to
last. What does it matter after all?—Don’t take it to heart. For it’s over
now, all over, thank God, and I have got back into normal relations with
things and with people.”—He looked at her very charmingly, and spoke with a
fine courtesy of tone.—“One way and another you have taught me a lot, and I
am grateful. And, in the future, though the conditions will be altered, I
hope you’ll come back here often, Honoria, and just see for yourself that my
mother is content; and give my schemes and fads a kindly look in at the
page: 607 same time. And perhaps give me a trifle
of sound advice. I shall need it safe enough. You see what I want to get at
is temperance—temperance all round, towards everything and everybody—not
fanaticism, which, in some respects, is a much easier attitude of mind.”

Richard looked up into the whispering, green tide overhead.

“Yes, one must deny oneself the luxury of fanaticism, if possible,” he said,
“deny oneself the vanity of eccentricity. One must take everything simply,
just in the day’s work. One must keep in touch. Keep in touch with your
world, the great world, the world which cultivates pleasure and incidentally
makes history, as well as with the world of the dust‐cart—I know that well
enough—if one’s to be quite sane. You see loneliness, a loneliness of which
I am thankful to think you can form no conception, is the curse of persons
like myself. It inclines one to hide, to sulk, to shut oneself away and
become misanthropic. To hug one’s misery becomes one’s chiefest pleasure—to
nurse one’s grief and one’s sense of injury. Oh! I’m wary, very wary now, I
tell you,” he added, half laughing. “I know all the insidious temptations,
the tricks and frauds and pit‐falls of this affair. And so I’ll continue to
go to Grimshott garden‐parties as discipline now and then, while I gather my
disabled and decrepit family very closely about me and say words of wisdom
to it—wisdom derived from a mature and extensive personal experience.”

There was a pause before Miss St. Quentin spoke. Then she said slowly.

“And you refuse to let anyone help? You, you refuse to let anyone share the
cares of that disabled family?”

Again Dickie stared at her, arrested by her speech and doubtful of the
intention of it. He could have sworn there were tears in her voice, that it
shook. But her face was averted, and he could see no more than the slightly
angular outline of her cheek and chin.

“Isn’t that a rather superfluous question?” he remarked. “As you pointed out
a little while ago, mine is not a superabundantly cheerful programme. No one
would volunteer for such service—at least no one likely to be acceptable to
my mother, or indeed likely to satisfy my own requirements. I admit, I’m a
little fastidious, a little critical and exacting, when it comes to close
quarters and—well—permanent association, even yet.”

“I am very glad to hear that,” Honoria said. Her face remained averted, but
there was a change in her attitude, a decision in the pose of her figure,
suggestive both of challenge and of triumph.

page: 608

Richard was nonplussed, but his blood was up. This conversation had gone far
enough—indeed too far. Very certainly he would make an end of it.

“But God forbid,” he exclaimed, “that I should ever fall to such a depth of
selfishness as to invite any person who would satisfy my taste, my demands,
to share my life! I mayn’t amount to very much, but at least I have never
used my personal ill‐luck to trade on a woman’s generosity and pity. What I
have had from women, I’ve paid for, in hard cash. In that respect my
conscience is clear. It has been a bargain, fair and square and above board,
and all my debts are settled in full. You hardly think at this time of day I
should use my proposed schemes of philanthropy as a bait?”

Richard sent his horse forward at a sharp trot.

“No, no, Honoria,” he said, “let it be understood that side of things is over
forever.”

But here came relief from the green glooms of the greenwood and the dangerous
magic of them. For the riders had reached the summit of the hill, and
entered upon the levels of the great tableland, at the edge of which
Brockhurst House stands. Here was the open, the fresh breeze, the
long‐drawn, sighing song of the fir forest—a song more austere, more
courageous, more virile, than any ever sung by the trees of the wood which
drop their leaves for fear of the sharp‐toothed winter, and only put them
forth again beneath the kisses of soft‐lipped spring. Covering all the
western sky were lines of softly‐rounded, broken cloud, rank behind rank, in
endless perspective, the whole shaped like a mighty fan. The under side of
them was flushed with living rose. The clear spaces behind them paved with
sapphire at the zenith, and palest topaz where they skirted the far
horizon.

“How very beautiful it is!” Honoria cried, joyously. “Richard, let us see
this.”

She turned her horse at the green ride which leads to the white Temple,
situated
situate
on that outstanding spur of hill. She rode on quickly till she
reached the platform of turf before the summer‐house. Richard followed her
with deliberation. He was shaken. His calm was broken up, his whole being in
tumult. Why had she pressed just all those matters home on him which he had
agreed with himself to cast aside and forget? It was a little cruel, surely,
that temptation should assail him thus, and the white road towards
Perfection be made so difficult to tread, just when he had re‐dedicated
himself and renewed his vows? He looked after her. It was here he had met
her first—after the time when, as a little maid, she had proved too swift of
foot,
page: 609 leaving him so far behind that
it sorely hurt his small dignity and caused him to see her depart without
regret. She was still swift of foot. She left him behind now. For the moment
he was ready to swear that not only without regret but with actual
thankfulness, he could again witness her departure.—Yes, he wanted her to
go, because he so desperately wanted her to stay —that was the truth. For
not only Dickie the natural man, but Dickie “the wild bull in a net,” had a
word to say just then. God in heaven what hard work it is to be good!

Miss St. Quentin kicked her left foot out of the stirrup, threw her right leg
over the pommel, turned, and slipped straight out of the saddle. She stood
there a somewhat severely tall, dark figure, strong and positive in effect,
against the immense and reposeful landscape—far‐ranging, purple distance,
golden harvest‐fields, silver glint of water in the hollows, all the massive
grandeur of the woods, and that superb pageant of sunset sky.

The groom rode forward, took her horse, led it away to the far side of the
grass platform behind the Temple. Those ranks of rosy cloud in infinite
perspective, with spaces of clearest topaz and sapphire light between,
converged to the glowing glory of the sun, the rim of which now touched the
margin of the world. They were as ranks of worshippers, of blessèd souls
redeemed and sainted, united in a common act of adoration, every form
clothed by reflection of His glory, every heart, every thought centred upon
God.—Richard looked at all that, but it failed to speak to him. Then he saw
Honoria resolutely turn her back upon the glory. She came directly towards
him. Her face was very thin, her manner very calm. She laid her left hand on
the peak of his saddle. She looked him full in the eyes.

“Richard,” she said, “be patient a minute and listen. It comes to this, that
a woman—your equal in position, of your own age, and not without money—does
volunteer to share your work. It’s no forlorn hope. She is not disappointed.
On the contrary she has, and can have, pretty well all the world’s got to
give. Only—perhaps very foolishly, for she doesn’t know much about the
matter, having been rather cold‐blooded so far—she has fallen in love.”

There was a silence, save that the wind came out of the west, out of the
majesty of the sunset; and with it came the calling of the sea—not only of
the blue water, or of those green tides that sweep above wandering mortals
in the magic greenwood, but of the sea of faith, of the sea of love—love
human, love divine, love universal—which circles not only this, but all
possible states of being, all possible worlds.

page: 610

Presently Richard spoke hoarsely, under his breath.

“With whom?” he said.

“With you”—

Dickie went white to the lips. He sat absolutely still for a little space,
his hands resting on his thighs.

“Tell her to think,” he said, at last.—“She proposes to do that which the
world will condemn, and rightly from its point of view. It will misread her
motives. It won’t spare disagreeable comment. Tell her to think.—Tell—tell
her to look.—Cripple, dwarf, the last, as he ought to be, of an unlucky
race—a man who’s carried up and down stairs like a baby, who’s strapped to
the saddle, strapped to the driving‐seat—who is cut off from most forms of
activity and of sport—a man who will never have any sort of career; who has
given himself, in expiation of past sins, to the service of human beings a
degree more unfortunate than himself.—No, no, stop—hear me out.—She must
know it all!—A man who has lived far from cleanly, who has evil memories and
evil knowledge of life—no—listen. A man whom you—yes, you yourself,
Honoria—have condemned bitterly; from whom, notwithstanding your splendid
nerve and pluck, so hateful is his deformity, you have shrunk a hundred
times.”

“She has thought of all that,” Honoria answered calmly. “But she has thought
of this too—that, going up and down the world to find the most excellent
thing in it, she has found this thing, love. And so to her, Richard, your
crippling has come to be dearer than any other man’s wholeness. Your wrong
doings—may God forgive her—dearer than any other man’s virtue. Your virtues
so wholly beautiful that—that”—

The tears came into her eyes, her lips quivered, she backed away a little
from rider and horse.

“Richard,” she cried fiercely, “if you don’t care for me, if you don’t want
me, be honourable, tell me so straight out and let us have done with it! I
am strong enough, I am man enough, for that. For Heaven’s sake don’t take me
out of pity. I would never forgive you. There’s a good deal of us both, one
way and another, and we should give each other a hell of a time if I was in
love and you were not. But”—she put her hand on the peak of that very ugly
saddle again—“but, if you do care, here I am. I have never failed anyone
yet. I will never fail you. I am yours body and soul. Marry me,” she
said.